Okay, so just a few minutes ago we pointed out that Xmarks now syncs bookmarks with Chrome—albeit in closed alpha test. Now Google announces that the latest Chrome dev channel release—4.0.201.1—adds bookmark synchronization without any add-ons.

Windows only: Good news for Chrome early adopters: Xmarks, the browser add-on that syncs bookmarks…
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It's interesting timing, to be sure, and we'd guess the Xmarks folks were probably watching the dev channel and decided to rush the announcement to beat Google to the punch. The fact is, Xmarks still offers something fairly different from what Google's sync tool will offer: namely, Xmarks will be able to sync between Chrome and virtually any other popular browser, including Firefox, IE, and Safari.

Chrome's sync tool will only work with Chrome, which means if you haven't decided you're ready to be a full-on Chrome adopter, Xmarks will probably remain the better option. Still, it's great to see progress all around with bookmark syncing in Chrome.

You'll need to use the Google Chrome Channel Chooser to join the Dev channel to get this release, start Chrome with the --enable-sync flag (right-click your Chrome shortcut, select Properties, then add --enable-sync behind the target as I've done in the screenshot), then just go to Wrench -> Sync my bookmarks.